The trouble that would plague Rachel Jackson during the election of 1828 had been simmering for years before her husband decided to run for office.
In "First Ladies," historian Patricia Brady said that, before she met Jackson, Rachel was "married very unhappily to a man who treated her badly."
Then she met Jackson, who was renting a room at one of her mother's properties.
"All his life, Jackson... couldn't bear to see women mistreated," Brady said.
Jackson and Rachel fell in love and eloped to Natchez.
The couple was close, and Brady described Rachel as Jackson's "touchstone."